Every Monday morning, a crew of Master Gardener volunteers assembles at the Department of Marine Resources (DMR) dock in Boothbay Harbor for a boat ride to Burnt Island. The island overlooks the outer harbor, peninsulas, and islands and boasts the second-oldest lighthouse tower in Maine, now owned by the DMR and destined soon to become a living history site. We are here to help Elaine Jones, the Department’s Education Coordinator and all-around Renaissance woman, prepare the island for its new career.

We disembark at the island’s dock, lug our tools and lunch up the runway and are greeted by a derelict lobster car spilling over with red and white impatiens, evidence of our efforts on the island. Nearby, more impatiens brighten the shady area around the kiosk that welcomes visitors with a map and display of information.

We tramp across the center of the island on a wide, wood-chip trail, noticing what shrubs and trees are in bloom or defoliated by insects and marveling at the "old man’s beard" fungus that festoons the aging, scraggly spruces, oaks, maples and other trees that cover most of Burnt Island. Less than a hundred years ago, the island was bare of trees, burned over regularly to maintain an arc of visibility of 360° so that mariners could see the light from anywhere around the bay. In later years, the trees were allowed to grow, but the Coast Guard cleared the east side of the island in 1998 to create a 180° arc, which will now be maintained by the state.

Walking a little farther, we pass the "wildlife area" created by some Boy Scouts in a little clearing in the woods surrounded by a rough stone wall. Here the brush has been cleared away and a flat site has been used for tenting. The Scouts planted highbush blueberries and mountain ash seedlings to attract wildlife, and the Master Gardeners have cleared the ground of weeds and planted a little bed with heliopsis, borage, and more impatiens. A carpet of landscape fabric and more wood chips are planned for fall, to keep the ground open for tenting and wildlife observation.

We arrive at the open area that surrounds the light tower and the keeper’s house, which is now being renovated and restored to its appearance as of 1950. Most of this area is grass, which DMR keeps mowed, but it is edged by bushes, wildflowers, roses, sumac, juniper and poison ivy, all of which we have pruned, weed whacked, transplanted, chipped, or cut down in the course of the nine weeks (so far) that we’ve worked here.

The light itself stands on the island’s highest point, with sparse grass and ledge running out to the edge of a modest cliff that looms thirty feet or more above the rocks and sea below. Our most dramatic achievement so far on Burnt Island has been the construction of a raised bed, approximately seventy feet long, that stretches along the cliff top and serves as a natural barrier to keep visitors back from the edge of the cliff.

The two men in the crew, able and intrepid carpenters as well as gardeners, built the bed using a chain saw and 4x4" timbers left from the demolition of a deck once attached to the keeper’s house. Students from Unity College dug up soil in the woods to fill the bed; we dug some more and added peat moss and slow release fertilizer. Rather than dig out the thin layer of grass that covers the ledge beneath the bed, we lined the bottom of the bed with old bed sheets left in the house by past keepers, to suppress the weeds while the plants put down roots.

Master Gardeners brought daylilies to fill the raised bed, the tawny orange ones that spread and will hold the soil in the bed in this exposed site. Red geraniums and dusty miller provide summer color while the daylilies are taking hold. We chose daylilies for their hardiness, their ability to spread and hold the soil and their tall, attractive foliage, which will create a visual and vegetative barrier to keep visitors back from the cliff edge without impairing the view or the arc of visibility of the light.

As we work along the cliff top, tour boats pass by, showing people the lighthouse and perhaps describing the changes occurring on Burnt Island. We wave; the passengers wave back, and the captain blows the horn. We feel we are part of a local landmark!

We have also transplanted rugosa roses along the lower parts of the cliff edge, in pockets of deeper soil. While they are not native to Maine, rugosas have grown here along the coast since the 1700’s. Hardy and beautiful, as well as easy to come by on the island, they provide another vegetative barrier along a hazardous edge.

Near the keeper’s house, Master Gardeners have begun restoring old flower and vegetable beds. We’ve pruned lilacs, forsythia, and rugosas, solarized beds overgrown with grass, and found thyme and oregano growing happily in the lawn. The rhubarb patch, huge and overgrown, now rests in several freezers. Our dahlias are huge, phlox and mallow prosper in the rock-edged beds, and the lovely swath of daisies we left to bloom have now been weed whacked. St. John’s Wort fills the unmowed areas, along with more daisies and butter-and-eggs. Soon we expect to be greeted by black-eyed susans and goldenrod. Tomatoes are coming along, and a circle of annuals blooming under the big old lilac makes a swatch of color in front of the house. Island visitors like to be photographed in front of our flowers.

Across the lawn at the edge of the woods, foxgloves flourish along a stone wall, probably originally planted by some long-ago keeper’s wife. We cleared weeds and brush and many gooseberry plants away to give them light and space. Next summer they should make quite a show.

The woods of Burnt Island are a lovely mixed-growth forest, not the dense, dark, spruce-fir growth of many Maine offshore islands. The shade is open and dappled in most places, with a varied understory of smaller hard– and softwoods and high-bush blueberries, as well as other shrubs. Raspberries abound in sunnier spots, and gooseberries flourish, though there are no pines on the island.

Because the large spruces, in particular, are reaching the end of their life spans, many blowdowns litter the island, opening the canopy to sunlight and new growth and providing a fine source of wood chips for paths and brush-clearing work for Master Gardeners. There is a trial around the island’s perimeter, as well as two cross-trails, and we have just begun clearing brush and blowdowns to make it wide enough for the long-awaited new tractor and chipper to navigate.

So we have become another paragraph in the chapter in the book of Burnt Island, a little part of the history of the many people who have lived and worked in this beautiful and rugged piece of Maine.